Soap Opera Ends As Trump Sells Out

Donald
Trump
Donald Trump
's attempt to seize control of the Empire State Building was no more successful than King Kong's. But unlike the ape, Trump at least may land on his feet.

Trump said today that he will surrender control of the Manhattan landmark to a partner of his bitter rival
Leona
Helmsley
Leona Helmsley
. It may not be a bad deal for Trump, although exactly how well he will make out could not be determined because all the details have not yet been revealed. The Donald and his Japanese partners, the heirs of onetime billionaire
Hideki
Yokoi
Hideki Yokoi
, have agreed to sell the building--all 102 floors and 365,000 tons of it--to real estate magnate
Peter
Malkin
Peter Malkin
for $57.5 million, some portion of which will accrue to Trump.

127881
Donald Trump
Trump and the Yokoi heirs hold the building's title, while Malkin controls the lease. Operational control is sublet to a partnership controlled by Malkin and Helmsley, who have squabbled in the past. Helmsley, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the deal.

Assuming the deal goes through, it may resolve the feud between Trump and Helmsley, two of the nation's best-known real-estate tycoons. But this may not be the last such dispute involving the Empire State Building. There's something about this towering Art Deco landmark that has always set America's plutocrats at each other's throats.

The bad blood can be traced all the way back to the 19th century, long before the building went up. Back then the site at Fifth Avenue between 33rd Street and 34th Street was home to mansions belonging to Caroline Astor, the queen of New York society, and to her nephew, who aspired to her throne. To spite his aunt, the nephew tore down his house and built the towering Waldorf Hotel. Caroline Astor promptly tore down her own house and built the even bigger Astoria. Combined into one hotel, the famous Waldorf-Astoria defined the elegance of the Gilded Age. Then in 1929 it moved uptown to a new location on Park Avenue, and the old building was razed to make way for the Empire State Building.

The skyscraper's origins can be traced to yet another high-profile feud, this one stemming from New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith's loss to Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election. Smith's campaign manager was the legendary financier John Jacob Raskob, who had helped build
General Motors
into a colossus. But GM chief Alfred P. Sloan was a Hoover man, so Sloan engineered Raskob's ouster from the automaker's board. Raskob promptly unloaded about $20 million of his GM shares and put the money into a new office tower to be erected on the old Waldorf-Astoria site. He brought in the now-unemployed Al Smith to boss the job.

In yet another automotive-related feud, Raskob and Smith found themselves in a race with Walter Chrysler to build the world's tallest building in midtown Manhattan. Chrysler's tower topped out at 1,048 feet, whereupon Smith and Raskob added a useless dirigible mooring mast that pushed the Empire State Building to a record height of 1,454 feet upon completion in 1931.

That record stood for four decades, until the World Trade Center surpassed it. By then the Empire State Building had long since passed into the hands of real estate magnate Harry Helmsley and his partners. They in turn sold the building in 1961, but had retained a 114-year lease under which they paid the owner an annual pittance of less than $2 million.

By the 1990s, the building had been acquired by members of Japan's Yokoi family, who soon began fighting among themselves. Eventually the Yokoi faction enlisted Trump to help them break the lease. That led to a headline-generating battle between Trump and Harry Helmsley's widow, Leona, who earlier had feuded with Malkin over her late husband's real estate empire. Ultimately, Trump's attempt to break the lease failed, and the deal announced today presumably will end his involvement with the building.

Since the tragic events of Sept. 11, the Empire State Building once again is the tallest in New York. Other cities now can claim taller buildings, but none of these upstart towers have so much history attached. Today's deal would reunite the building's lease and its title for the first time in four decades, which presumably would make this controversial property more appealing to future buyers. If history is any guide, however, they may be buying themselves nothing but trouble.